I'm sorry you feel that way. I do not have those answers.

BAMatt have you discussed we all feel the 25% free hosting is not acceptable as compensation? I think we would all like to know the context of the meeting you had with bobsag this weekend. Also can you let people know how to go about starting the refund process that you offered the other day?  

Who pays you?

Multiple people run the company. I don't know the address of the factory. That's a better question for Bobsag. I've never been to the factory.

1. We did not lie on Jan 3. We were planning to tape out before the Chinese New Year. On Jan 3 we were informed that the back end team cannot reach their target and need to try another layout. This meant to do some changes in the RTL code and start back end process all over again. We have immediately announced the worst date we could think of for batch 2 and not announced details about batch one because we did not had them. We just got the final data from the back end team 5 days ago. They have now reached their target and are now 99% sure that they'll tape out 1 week after Chinese new year (15-20 Jan).
 
2. We have looked into our competitors claims together with Global Foundries. GF is obviously not at liberty to discuss the specific projects with third parties but they assured us that it is impossible to finish 28nm in 49days and to cover every step. 28nm is very complicated and DRC/LSV and JDV checking takes at least 14 days. The wafer manufacturing takes 0.8days / layer at their highest speed. Our conclusion is that our competitors have deliberately omitted several steps in their advertising and were only referring to wafer manufacturing.
 
3. The tapeout costs millions of dollars. We do not have a customer that paid that much to make a tapeout just for them. We had to think further than 1 month. 1.5W/Ghash is not only electricity problem. The whole power translates into heat, therefore more things are required: power chips, heatsinks, AC, new case design, etc.
 
4. We cannot produce the PCBs without the exact pin layout of the chip. This has not been yet received.  We could not produce the case without the exact heat estimation.
 
5. Black Arrow is the only Bitcoin ASIC manufacturer that has not betrayed customer's trust. While others let the deadline pass by and did not announce anything we have clearly informed our customers of the situation.
The tapeout is almost complete and the path from here to ASIC is clearly drawn in the industry.
 
6. Yes, we should be able to run at 120Ghash/sec according to our tools and Verisilicon. Verisilicon gives us the SS corner for speed and TT corner for power. FF corner can be even faster.
 
For those who do not know:
SS = slow slow - absolutely lower limit (speed & voltage) where it can run
TT = typical typical - normal usage; note that 28nm is rated at 25C but leakage increases dramatically with the temperature. The real power consumption at 60C is only a guess at this stage.
FF = fast fast - higest speed, highest voltage, also the highest power consumption. - we have no data on this, it's only discovered while testing real chips.
 
7. We only have few Bitfuries left. It would mean to give everybody less than 1% of what they have ordered. This i more trouble than it worths.
 
8. The chip is designed in China, manufactured in Germany, packaged in Taiwan. Finally the Prospero will be assembled in China

Ok. Then you have nothing and cannot help. I am sorry, but those are the facts. BA still has not levelled with us.

I didn't know about the tapeout target because I'm not an engineer and I just deal with troubleshooting tickets and trying to answer questions. I am not one of the two or so people who have access to bank accounts or bitcoin wallets. I do not know who made the decision to go ahead with the chip. I'd guess it was the highest level of BA since I wasn't a part of the decision. I don't know the date either.

I can't keep up with this thread. The reading I've been doing has been disappointing. I'd appreciate it if everyone could cut the trolling and flaming and just speak about the issues at hand. Telling each other to F-off looks bad and the off topic conversations causes those with actual questions to get drowned out.

I have no updates at the moment.

I believe it is hovering around this price precisely because it has been at that price for a while and is now seen as "the price". So people who think the price should go down a lot when bad news hits are surprised when the price drops and people buy it up pushing the price back to 800ish. Then people are surprised when it does not skyrocket on good news when it starts going up and people start selling and shorting because they know the price will return to 800.

There are two major things holding the price down. China and the FBI. Once those are out of the way it may jump again...but not until something big knocks it out of the range where people believe it will return to 800. Last time it hovered around 125 for a long time for that reason. The China exchanges knocked it up to 200, then as it started falling back down it took another jump pushing past 260 which left all thoughts of 125 behind.

Woa ..

the next ASIC manufacturer should just state something like "optimistically to deliver in Feb 2014 with possible chance of delay, +/- 2 months"

Seems that the price of btc has maintained right around the $800 level on all exchanges for a fairly long time (except for Mtgox) - and it is doing so a little bit too conveniently.  With the stock market making big moves and various big news stories coming out about Turkey, Argentina, BTC china accepting deposits again, etc, you would think there would be bigger moves.  My guess:  the large btc holders are trying to reduce volatility in btc to remove this stigma about it.  They do so by capping rises and putting a floor on dips.  Manipulation is manipulation.  Let the market take it where it wants to go.

Yeah, go the refund if you can.

I can say it's a good feeling getting a refund and then spending the money on hardware that actually exists and has been road-tested by the community. Better to pay a little bit more and have the product 'in hand' as they say rather than wait for, in one well known case, up to and over a year for units to arrive.

I'm far from unsympathetic to the cause of customers duped by manufacturers promises, I was one previously and was fortunate to take action to get a refund and tried to layout a path for others to also get refunded. You can see that my comments on page 12 of this thread were elevated to the OP in an endeavour to assist others:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=295187.0

What has become clear is that after the fiasco involving a number of manufacturers with credit card chargebacks, paypal refunds and similar is that some hardware manufacturers became smarter at defrauding more deliberate in only accepting payment methods which were far more difficult to get refunded.

We all make mistakes and even though I read that I should stay well clear of BFL as they took many, many months to deliver, I was still optimistic enough to believe their repeated claims that 'all products would be shipped by the end of September', when as we know now, this was just another deliberate lie mis-representation of their capabilities.

So far from just chipping in on this thread for the hell of it, I am rather hoping that some new members of this forum (and there are loads of those) actually take the time to think before they spend their money and get the miners they pay for in the time frames they expect to receive them.

This just aint happening here, is it?

 

As I said above, I won't be going anywhere, I explained my reasons why the broader community needs to know about the underhanded business practices of hardware manufacturers and I sure as hell am not the first person to say that on this forum. I don't repeat myself to asshats so I won't tell you why your gullibility and stupidity allows others to get rich from your money while screwing you into the ground.

You're a fool and the worst sort of fool is the fool who doesn't know he's a fool.

Your accolades are growing by the hour, about-to-be-scammed, scammed, scammee, asshat and fool.

How about you actually address what people are saying rather than venting your frustration with meaningless teen-angst-ridden insults?

If you're wounded and people commenting on the lack of business ethics by BA and others pours salt in your wounds and makes you mad, I understand, you're not liking the pain and you're not able to lash out at BA as... wait for it... they haven't even made an official comment on their own official thread. You, their loyal customer and patsy, are being ripped so you'd prefer that people were quiet than quite rightly inform other members of the community that BA are struggling to meet any customer commitments at all.

Wounded and hurt, maybe we add those to your list? Or are you all cool again and fine with being ripped?

  I agree.

Read on, Lloydie, you're not even at the end of the conversation. You missed the post where the mod neatly negates the person you're ostensibly supporting then your champion flounders by trying to cherry-pick parts of my comments.

Did I forget to mention you're an asshat?

Run along now, let's hear something that resembles a paragraph of original thought when you next post. I have to say that my post about you and the dead philosophers still makes me smile, especially as it only seems to have now dawned on you that you are the about-to-be-scammed, the scammed and the scammee.

You didn't know you were more than just an asshat, did you?

 

No mate, you can fuck off yourself asshole. When members of the community provide information that informs the community at large of nefarious dealings, inconsistent statements, broken promises and attempts to defraud, it sure as hell isn't trolling, it's holding people to account.

If you don't like it that's too fucking bad.

I do hope you get your hardware but in the meantime, direct any anger you have to those who've deliberately lied to you about realistic delivery dates, those who've suckered you in to take the investment risk normally taken by venture capitalists who also become part owners in the business and who have dangled you out on the customer thread with very limited upside, that is, assuming you get a product at all.

You may not like it, but your attempts to shout down meaningful criticism do you no service at all.

I can just hear dead philosophers turning in their graves as they muse over the moral quandry while rubbing their chins where beards may once have grown:

"Hmm... who is more morally good, the scammed or those that did advise the about-to-be-scammed of the scammer?"

On balance, the dead philosophers would probably declare that those who did advise the about-to-be-scammed of the perils of doing business with the scammer would have the higher quotient of goodness in their hearts as they took it upon themselves to inform the about-to-be-scammed of the risks that lay in wait for them. Those about-to-be-scammed who were then in fact scammed cannot seek to claim moral goodness by trumpeting that those who tried to help them avoid being scammed lack goodness in their heart.

As is the way with dead philosophers, with one moral question having been decided to their current satisfaction, they turn further in their graves but not having any other issue on the matter to address, cease stroking their chins where beards may once have grown...

...that is, until one of the dead philosophers with a puzzled expression asks,

"If we know who the about-to-be-scammed, the scammed and the scammer is, then who is the scammee?"

And so in death as in life, questions continue, chins are rubbed where beards may once have grown and the cycle of existence doth continue.







-----

And for the non-philosophically minded there's some information here http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/scammee

Yeah sure, if you will see a major dump or auction = bad news.
If you will see major buy-off = good news.


This is the way you can predict what FC will say next.